Time stops, drips.
His breath comes out in gasps, a segregated procession of condensed air curling into night, mixing with the smoke unraveling from the barrel of the pistol. Ken is staring at him, his young face rimmed with horror. Small things take on great importance: the paleness of the moon against Takaya's skin, how his heart is thudding laboriously in his ears, the red droplets on Ken's jacket from the blood spray. Everything is slowly ticking out, as surely as a pocket watch losing its springs and cogs and falling into decay, as surely as the Dark Hour halting time each night.
"How very futile." Takaya sniffs scornfully, as though even this display is distasteful. "This was not your time to fight. Still, it will all be over anyway." He waves it off, disappearing into the night. For a while, Shinjiro can't fathom why, wonders if this was all one big nightmare anyway. But then he feels the blood.
Voices drift over him, sounding far away.
"It was worth it, to fight." He quips back, his voice shaky. He's not even sure if Takaya's still there, or who he's saying this to anymore.
And was it worth it? Every pump of his heart is like a kick in the side, a fresh rupture. Forms in the alley lose their shape and substance, take on new forms until he's not sure what or who he's talking with anymore, whether or not reality is continuing or if this is all in his head.
Somewhere, Ken is sobbing, angry.
"You get to take the easy way out. You always get the easier way than me, you never stay around to deal with what happens after...!"
In the distance, something howls, maybe a dog.
Easier way out? Shinjiro considers it, as shadows rush in at him from all sides. They're not the ones that he used to fight, they're just soft and full of numbness, nibbling away quietly at the edges of his vision. He holds out his hand with some effort, moving it to cup the moon hanging bright against the green sky. Around him, like a gathering of crows, the shadows move in and for a moment he imagines that they're his friends, the rest of SEES, that crazy group hellbent on defeating evil and taking down Tartarus.
The safer thing would be to go into this knowing that he would get better; the easier thing would be to rig it so that he'd live either way. But that wouldn't accomplish anything. Ken wouldn't want to move on, Akihiko wouldn't realize that he had to let Miki go. Someone's got to be their catalyst, for all of them, but still...
"This is probably the hardest thing I've ever done."
Everything leads to this. Time stops, drips into the wet streets, seconds slide through rivulets of blood. And somewhere, a pocket watch cracks.